On the one hand, I am glad this is finally happening.
On the other hand, I am 99% certain my father, who’s worked at variously the Everett and Renton plants his entire adult life, is continuing to be a scab, as he has also done his entire adult life.
Raised me on Rush Limbaugh, last I talked to him he was a Q Anon nut that believed Antifa did Jan 6th and Tom Hanks’ son rapes and kills children for their adrenochrome.
The 1% uncertainty is not from a 1% chance he might actually also be striking, its the 1% chance he’s either retired or died from a heart attack since I last spoke to him.
I think if people had even more guns this could have been avoided. What if there was a six year old with a 22 there to respond to the gunshots with some of his own? maybe less people would be dead.
Guns make everyone way safer. We need to start providing them in utero.
The uniformed duo followed the alleged fare-beater up the stairs to the elevated L train platform around 3 p.m., when they gave him commands to stop and turn around. Maddrey said during a verbal altercation, they “became aware of a knife.”
Body-worn camera footage, which Maddrey said he reviewed before the press conference, allegedly showed the man make a verbal threat to the officers. He told the cops, “I’m going to kill you if you don’t stop following me,” the chief said.
As the encounter continued to escalate, a northbound L train pulled into the station. The train cars opened and the man jumped inside, according to police.
They shot because the guy charged at them with a knife, not because of the fare. OP’s thread title is deliberately misleading, in a desperate attempt to twist this into ACAB fuel.
Any bystander injuries are to be blamed on the aggressor Mr. Knifey.
Hey now, when Kyle Rittenhouse crossed state lines to take pot-shots into a crowd of protesters, he paid every toll and observed every traffic ordinance. How can you possibly compare Rittenhouse to this turnstile jumping barbarian?
It sounds like the guy had a knife and threatened to use it. It also sounds like the cops tried to taze the guy first, but it didn’t work.
We can argue whether the cops really needed to shoot the guy. But they weren’t shooting at a fare evader, they were shooting at a guy with a knife who also happened to jump the turnstile.
I’d argue that the real problem is that the cops didn’t know how to de-escalate the situation without shooting. It’s like the tazer was their only “non-lethal” option, and when that didn’t work, they panicked. (I could also believe that they were simply incompetent, and couldn’t work the tazer properly.)
The guy only threatened to use the knife after they stopped him for turnstile jumping. If the New York subway didn’t have turnstiles (the L.A. subway doesn’t), most people would still pay their fares. Most people understand that their fares keep the trains running. There was no need for this. At all.
I should say that there are transit cops that check tickets in L.A. If you don’t have one, all they do is escort you out of the station. And this is the LAPD we’re talking about.
The guy only threatened to use the knife after they stopped him for turnstile jumping.
I should say that there are transit cops that check tickets in L.A. If you don’t have one, all they do is escort you out of the station. And this is the LAPD we’re talking about.
The first step to “escorting you out of the station” is stopping you, is it not?
My whole point is that the cops didn’t get belligerent until he pulled the knife. It also sounds like he might have boarded a train with the knife out, too. (It was the L train, though, I’m sure the riders have seen worse.)
They didn’t start shooting because he jumped the turnstile. I bet if he didn’t have a knife they would have just wrote him a ticket and made him leave.
You dont think your LA cops would have treated their fare evader a bit differently if he pulled a knife?
Yes, stopping you to say, “can I see your ticket?” If the person without a ticket runs, where are they going to run to? Back on the train that just left? They can’t do that. Out of the station? That’s where they were going to be taken anyway. It’s not worth the cops’ time in L.A. like it apparently is in New York.
But it sounds like the guy said “I’m gonna kill you if you don’t stop following me”, then hopped on the train with the knife out. You think the cops in LA would have let him do that?
Didn’t it literally just happen there like two weeks ago when LAPD TSD used force against someone evading fare and they ran, jumped onto the tracks, and were then electrocuted and run over by a train?
LA metro rail has yearly ridership of a little less than 62 million.
You don’t get to pretend two train systems are not similar because you write BILLION in all caps and bold.
Thank you, by the way, for so clearly representing yourself in your post history. You’re doing this old man a service by making it so obvious that you are continually arguing in bad faith.
Most people understand that their fares keep the trains running.
Fares make up for about 10% of operating expenses for our trains. User-fees promote a dangerous need to balance yesterday’s costs with today’s availability, which is ultimately self-defeating.
The LA subway has turnstiles. Most people don’t pay. I’d watch maybe 2/3rds of people skip payment by using the wheelchair/bike turnstile. They would do it in front of cops.
They have the simple waste-high turnstile at every subway stop. At above-ground locations they don’t have these. They have been there for 15 years or longer.
There are no full height “man trap” turnstiles if that’s what you’re talking about.
I took the train from NoHo to downtown or Long Beach all the time and I do not remember turnstiles. In fact, I remember wondering where they were the first time I did it.
And yet they didn’t release the footage. Either there’s no knife or the behavior of the police was outrageously incompetent. If they were justified they’d be tripping over themselves to show it.
Do we actually know if he had a knife? Initial reporting was that the police knew he had a knife because he refused to take his hands out of his pockets. While he did threaten them, it was contingent upon them continuing to follow them. He did not actually attack them until after multiple officers attempted to tase him. Furthermore, so what if he had a knife? As far as we’re aware, he’s got a second amendment right to keep and bear arms. Being armed isn’t an excuse to be killed by cops because you are generally explicitly allowed to be armed.
All in all:
We don’t know he’s armed
We don’t know his intentions
He didn’t immediately attack anyone
While he did threaten them he made no indication that he intended to follow through until he was attacked
He continued to try to leave the situation until he was attacked
The police attacked him first
He didn’t have a gun
4 people were shot by the police; he was killed (this seems to have been erroneously reported earlier. He is now reportedly in critical condition), an officer and 2 bystanders were wounded
No one was stabbed
While that is textbook escalation, it really doesn’t seem like they shot him cause he had a knife. They shot him (and 3 others) cause he didn’t care about their authority and they couldn’t let the guy that was already on the train go. And all that came about because he tried to skip a fare that costs around the same amount as the bullets fired.
“We will be working through the timeline of today, but make no mistake, the events that occurred on the Sutter Avenue station platform are the results of an armed perpetrator who was confronted by our officers doing the job we asked them to do," Donlon said.
Could we maybe not ask police officers to escalate minor and petty conflicts all the way up to shooting everyone in the immediate vicinity?
I’ve never put much stock in the “we are living in a simulation” but stories like this make me wonder if one of the sim developer’s kids is in here doing stuff.
The last time he was up for election we had some maniac fly in from a flyover state into San Francisco that set a bunch of fires all over California in the middle of a drought to “own the libs”. The threats of violence ve from these terrorists are real and substantiated.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
This is one nice thing about a former president running again, we can see what kind of president they will be and…yea, he’d do that, because he kind of already did that, several times.
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